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Over the last half century, discourses and practices connected to the idea that violent or dictatorial pasts should be marked as criminal have proliferated. A variety of actors – from victims groups to social movements, to expert groups such as lawyers, museums specialists and even economists – have contributed to the emergence and circulation of…

Sat 28 April 2018: 10:00 – 17:30 BST Room 153, Birkbeck, University Of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom Register Here Latin American critical legal theory still remains as the most creative and interesting scholarship for many different motives. Possibly the main reason is that it has always been directed to understanding (or placing) critique in a…

On 27 February 2018, an overwhelming majority of members of South Africa’s National Assembly adopted a motion to begin the process of amending the ‘property clause’ in the constitution. Given the befuddled nature of the present clause, the proposed amendment seeks to clarify and simplify the powers of a hitherto pro-market and thus lackadaisical state…

The Centre for the Study of Colonialism, Empire and International Law at SOAS University of London and Durham Law School’s Law and Global Justice research centre are delighted to launch the Postgraduate Colloquium in Critical International Law to be held at SOAS in London on 20th September 2018. The colloquium will focus on postgraduate research in…

Yet another episode in the story of Jeremy Corbyn’s antisemitism. This time from 2012, in expressed support for a graffiti artist’s free speech rights after the artist’s painting of white bankers playing monopoly on the backs of the globe’s dispossessed was declared offensive for its racist caricatures of Jews. And as others have said, this…

Searching for Critical Environmental Law: Theories, Methods, Critiques Call for Papers, Workshop, May 11, 2018 in Oxford Co-organized by Andreas Kotsakis, Oxford Brookes University & Vito De Lucia, UiT Arctic University of Norway The field of critical environmental law has yet to develop any consistent self-awareness as a set of problematisations, methods and theories of either…

We the undersigned, Call on the UCU national leadership to reconsider its position reached in ACAS negotiations with UUK on the 12th March 2018. The current agreement kicks a serious solution to the pension dispute in the long grass, committing to a three year process of re-evaluation. It further does so at the very moment…

A Marxist problematization of the concept of constitutional crisis. Originally published by Legal Form. Republished by permission. What is a constitutional crisis? Can a diverse array of observed phenomena — such as the slow-motion coup in Brazil, the legal and jurisprudential uncertainty that will attend any possible Brexit, or the attempts to consolidate ethnically and religiously…

Key Concept Today, the oath seems to us obscure and obsolete. As an enigmatic relic of earlier times, it invokes the authority of sacred and supernatural powers that go beyond the scope of human capabilities, and by doing so it realizes its aim—namely, truth-telling. Since these powers are no longer as effective as they used…

Next week the UCU (University and Colleges Union), which represents most people working as lecturers and researchers in universities, is beginning a wave of strikes. The strike is about cuts to pensions. Since there is a large financial hole in the main pension fund, the bodies that administrate that fund are hoping to lessen it…

The recent controversies about Oxford Professor Nigel Biggar’s “Ethics and Empire” project and UK Universities Minister Jo Johnson’s attack on “safe space culture” have both been defended on freedom of speech grounds. However, they are better understood as retrenching colonial thinking in universities. Nigel Biggar’s research project proposes to take a cost-benefit analysis of British imperial…

Key Concept Whether one believes that law is provided by God (Natural Law), is created by human intellect (Positivism), a gendered institution perpetuating patriarchy (Feminism) or the maintainer of the status quo against marginalised groups (Critical Legal Studies), undergirding those beliefs is the assumption that law is autonomous. In its autonomy, law operates as an…

Key Concept In From Apology to Utopia (1989), the Finnish jurist and former diplomat Martti Koskenniemi presents his thesis on international law’s fundamental indeterminacy. This would come to epitomize a critical moment in international law. Rather than repeat the classical legal view concerning “relative indeterminacy” (where, in some difficult but marginal cases there might not…

Continuing the reposted series from State of Nature, the question is whether Fascism is making a comeback? Laurence Davis Seventy-two years after the end of World War II, the spectre of fascism is again haunting the globe. The important questions we should be asking are why, and what can be done about it. The evidence…

As environmental law reveals, we now live in a new era: the Molysmocene, a geological era shaped by human waste and its management. The climate talks of 6–17 November 2017 in Bonn are now over. This 23rd Convention of the Parties of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-23) was tasked with the implementation of the…

The privatisation of criminal justice practices is an affront to human dignity. When we are acted upon for profit as well as for justified ends, the proper link between coercion, rights, and authority is lost. Ministry of Justice proposals could mean that all collection of court fines — powers normally exercised by Civilian Enforcement Officers, employees…

The recent “burqa bans” in Austria and Quebec appear to be troubling legal manifestations of the rising tide of Islamaphobia in Europe and North America. The news coverage of the bans coincided for me with a bout of reflexive angst regarding the recent publication of an article on Shari’a based reservations to CEDAW. I wrote…

Applications are now open for fully funded studentships at The Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The Faculty is consistently ranked as one of the top 20 law schools worldwide. Each year 10-12 students are admitted to PhD, SJD and MPhil programmes. Supervision is available in most areas of private, public,…

In a 2013 contribution aimed at influencing the post-2015 development agenda, seventeen UN Special Rapporteurs recommended that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should include a goal on the provision of social protection floors. In April 2015 the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR or the Committee) issued a Statement on ‘Social protection…

Date: 15 June 2018 Location: SOAS University of London This is a call for proposals for a one-day interdisciplinary conference which aims to explore the debates that led to the reform of age of consent laws around the British Empire during the years 1880 to 1930. The conference is particularly interested in exploring the issues…